Avengers: Endgame Directors On Ending So Many Characters’ Stories

Avengers: Endgame was burdened with tying up several narrative threads sprawling across the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a tightly knit bow. In doing so, many of those stories came to what seem like permanent endings with very little room for future endeavors to play out. For the directors, Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, each of these moments and threads required a careful and delicate approach.

Spoilers for Avengers: Endgame follow. Major spoilers!

Some of the main characters in Avengers: Endgame saw their stories come to what seem to be permanent closes. Other characters saw seeds for future adventures being planted. Each thread was meant to come to a close for the Russo Brothers, who have been working with Marvel Studios since making Captain America: The Winter Soldier in 2014.

“It was the end of the story. It was very much in a vacuum,” Joe Russo told THR. “I was texting with a lot of the directors over the last few hours. It’s really an incredible experience to get to work with a collection of artists like we have over the last seven years where everyone really trusts each other and hands the baton off very selflessly to one another.”

Of course, none of the stories felt more conclusive than that of Iron Man, who sacrificed himself as a means to stop Thanos, once and for all. “We did pitch Robert his arc, because he kicked off the entire MCU,” Joe Russo said. “The Tony Stark arc is the longest and perhaps fullest in the MCU. Once we decided we wanted this kind of ending for the character, we certainly wanted to make sure Robert was comfortable with it, just because of his enormous contribution to the MCU. We did pitch it out. We went over to meet with him and we pitched it out to him.

“A lot of the actors are not opinionated about what we do. They like the fact that we are sort of in control of these stories and we are driving where they should go and we have a vision for where they should go and they trust in that. I think Downey may have had mixed emotions about thinking about [where Tony Stark ends up in Endgame], but I think at the end of the day, he totally accepted it.”

In addition to crafting a fulfilling and conclusive narrative, the Russo Brothers also had to consider Disney’s daunting task of paying each of the many cast members.

“It was a huge financial issue on this one, and really the way it manifested for us was the fact that we shot these movies back-to-back,” Anthony Russo explained. “The primary motivation to shoot these movies back-to-back like this and to block them was so that we could condense actors’ work so we were basically buying them for a little more than one movie rather than two full movies. Marvel and Disney were able to structure deals with the actors because we were economizing their time commitment by blocking the movies this way. That was the only reason to shoot these movies this way. Of course, there was a huge creative upside for Joe and I, in that we got to tell a story with all these characters and all these wonderful actors. Everything else about blocking these movies together is a downside. It was really difficult. Each of these movies was the most difficult, complex movie we’ve ever made individually and to do them back-to-back together was a really daunting task.”

What did you think of Tony Stark’s sendoff in Avengers: Endgame? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram and Twitter! Also, tune into ComicBook.com’s Game Over: An Evening With Joe Russo on May 6 for a chance to get more of your questions answered!

Avengers: Endgame is now playing in theaters.